Little is known about north-west Derbyshire before the
Domesday Book of 1086, when the New Mills district was on the
southern edge of the king's estate known as Longdendale. The Domesday
Book records that a thane called Ligulf had formerly held land in
"Tornesete" (Thornsett), the earliest record of a local
place name. By the thirteenth century, the area now known as New
Mills was being administered as part of the royal forest of the Peak,
which occupied much of north-west Derbyshire. In 1372, the manor and
forest of the Peak passed into the ownership of John of Gaunt to
become, from 1399, part of the huge crown estate known as the Duchy
of Lancaster. As a result, there is a rich source of documents in the
public and county record offices. We now know that the town of New
Mills takes its name from a Duchy corn mill called 'Berde' mill,
dating from before 1391, which was located near the site of the
present Salem Mill (at the bottom of High Street). Soon after 1391,
if not before, the mill became known as New Mill ('Newmylne').

By the late sixteenth century the name New Mill was in
use as a place name for the little settlement which had grown up
around the corn mill. Together with a number of other places, such as
Hayfield and Chinley, the settlement was part of a large
administrative area known as Bowden Middlecale which consisted of the
ten hamlets. In 1713 these were formed into three groups for tax
purposes: Bugsworth, Brownside, Chinley: Great Hamlet, Phoside,
Kinder; and Beard, Ollersett, Thornsett and Whitle. The last group of
four (with the addition of Newtown) later came to form the district
known as New Mills. Ecclesiastically, all the above hamlets, together
with Mellor, were in the ancient parish of Glossop. But because of
the extensive and hilly nature of the parish, chapelries were
established at Hayfield and Mellor with their own churches and
registers (dating from 1620). New Mills was split between these two
chapelries until the new parish of New Mills was formed in 1844 (St
Georges church, a 'commissioners' church, had already been opened in
1831) comprising the four hamlets of Beard, Ollersett, Thornsett and Whitle.

Before industrialisation and the coming of the textile
mills, the area consisted of scattered hill farms, cottages and
hamlets, all with names which we would recognise today. In the late
eighteenth century, with the onset of the industrial revolution and
the introduction of water power for cotton, there came a rapid and
fundamental change. New mills were built in the Torrs, the natural
gorge running through the town, on the banks of the rivers Sett and
Goyt. From the original nucleus of houses built around the 'New
Mill', a new town quickly grew up, spreading up what is now High
Street and over the fields of the Torr Top estate. A population of
1,878 in 1801 had almost doubled by 1831.